Samsung's Exynos line of mobile processors was introduced a few years ago to a great fanfare, apparently meant to increase even further the vertical integration of the company's phone components made in-house.

The thing is that we are rarely seeing those processors now, even in Samsung handsets, and it is mostly Qualcomm for the high-end and midrange, or Broadcom and MediaTek for the entry level phones of the Koreans. Does that mean the Exynos chipset is a fail?

Some analysts seem to think so, as the application processor market share of Samsung plunged from 9.4% in Q1 to 6.8% in Q2, and then further to 5.3% last quarter - that's the lowest level since the Exynos line introduction. The issue is that Qualcomm packs everything in its mobile processors, including the baseband radio, and it is the undisputed leader in 4G/LTE connectivity, so it is sometimes more economical for Samsung to just go Snapdragon instead of trying to pair silicon with less efficiency.

Nevertheless, Korean media is reporting that it all might change with the introduction of the Samsung Galaxy S5 next year, as it is rumored to feature a 64-bit Exynos processor, made with its new 14nm technology. That means we will have an even more powerful and much more frugal chipset - the big.LITTLE architecure is said to be Cortex-A53/Cortex-A57 combo, bringing along times the performance of the current 28nm Exynos 5420, with half the power consumption.

Well then everyone is copying IBM and so on. This whole 64 bit BS is so overblown, but I guess the media needed something to call the iPhone innovative for. 64 bit was an obvious and normal move, just as die/process shrinks on the processors and such are. It's sad that that is all apple can be called innovative for these days. Plus it's a gimmick at its finest in the iPhone because they just don't have the ram for it.

Aside from that rant the reason they keep the big.little thing going instead of just using one or two cores only is because the apps being optimized for multicores have difficulty going single. The synchronization of simulations elements then needs to be reorganized into a linear order. This would reduce performance greatly and force more cores to open up and consume more power. So instead you simulate the same runtime environment with 4 low power cores and cause less problems for developers and the system.

Most of the advantage of going "64 bit" comes from the move to the ARMv8 instruction set. Unfortunately, you can't go with ARMv8 without going 64 bit. The fact that Apple's dual core, 1.3 Ghz A7 chip outpaces a quad core 2.3 Ghz Snapdragon 800 in most benchmarks should make it clear enough that Apple's move to 64 bit was anything but a gimmick. Repeating such nonsense is both delusional and willfully ignorant to the facts.

As for innovation, I don't think you have to look much further than Apple's implementation of biometric scanning, Touch ID. What they've done with the scanning on the home button and on the silicon with the secure enclave is actually considered pretty innovative. By comparison, look at the HTC One max implementation and tell me otherwise.

For that matter, perhaps you can provide me with a more recent example of innovation in the mobile hardware space. FYI, moving from a 5" phablet to a 6" phablet isn't innovation.

Uhhh no, most of the advantage of 64 bit comes from more RAM addressing. The ARMv8 instruction set is being touted for a different reason. That reason being that instead of the AMDx64 ideology of putting two 32bit addresses together to make 64 bit happen and therefore, having backwards compatibility guaranteed at the cost of performance, ARM decided to create a bottom to top adaptation for their 64 bit architecture with comparability for 32 bit leading to a slight drop in 32 bit performance made up for with faster hardware. So the reason Apple's dual core out paces qualcomm quads is because Apple is tested on only dual core tests, so Apple wins because apparently they didn't show up to the fight. If for example they show up to the quad fight, they get demolished, such as the physics tests in the link below from Anandtech (the authors are so nice to pass it off as a bug but hey, they need to feed their kids too):

Also, the "innovation" of touch ID came from the company Apple bought, and they didn't invent the touch sensor. Their adaptation of the touch sensor is different but by no means revolutionary and has been done before (not in smartphones though). The fingerprint sensor has been used in phones before and isn't an "innovation" by any means. But, our friends in the media need to call Apple innovative (they did give themselves the title of "most innovative" after all) or else they get yelled at by fanboys, and so they find whatever little reason to do it. As for the HTC One Max, they have a different approach and more power to them. Is it an "innovation" that is revolutionary, F no, whoever said it was an idiot.

And no one said innovation existed in the recent hardware race. The most I can think of is the low power cores in the Moto X that are always on, but that is more an innovation of ideology of hardware use than the hardware itself (simply, the hardware was always there, using for that purpose in that way wasn't). But, while there isn't hardware innovation, greater hardware value exists in the Android side much more than the Apple side. They call 64 bit forward thinking, but at what point will the 5s magically get more than 3 GB of RAM (NEVER)? So when 64 bit is needed and more RAM is addressed....the 5s will still have 1 GB. But you know what will scale when greater scalability to OS and apps is added....the under utilized quad cores (or however many they have). But no one called that an innovation, no one touted it as super future thinking either (like they do for Apple's 64 bit which will and does amount to nothing in the 5s).

Finally, do yourself a favor and PLEASE learn how computers and technology work. So you do not end up down this path again. I do not want to hate on Apple, but they are doing some shady and sad things right now. So I will call it out and also try to help those that do not understand any of it...like you.

Sorry, FinalFlash, but if you're going to make demonstrably incorrect claims, I'm going to call you on it.

"So the reason Apple's dual core out paces qualcomm quads is because Apple is tested on only dual core tests".

Wrong. Examples like Geekbench's multi-core benchmark alone is an example which proves your claim to be incorrect.

As for Touch ID and innovation, maybe you should educate yourself a bit before you continue to spout off. Understand what's different about Apple's implementation, then discuss.

Apparently, I can't post links until I've been registered for more than 7 days. So, do a search for Quroa and "Touch ID" and "Secure Enclave" if you're actually interested in learning something.

"The most I can think of is the low power cores in the Moto X that are always on"

Yeah, that and the M7 chip Apple designed for low power monitoring for motion sensors, etc.

"like they do for Apple's 64 bit which will and does amount to nothing in the 5s"

Right, Apple's A7 chip doubled the performance of their A6 chip by moving to 64 bit, but it does nothing?? Both chips are dual core, both chips run at the same clock speed. Seriously, do the math. Do you think there is a magic genie running inside the chip that just makes it work faster? WTF? For that matter, you should actually read the links that you post.

From the Anandtech review:
" ARMv7 had 15 general purpose registers (and 1 register for the program counter), while ARMv8/A64 now has 31 that are each 64-bits wide. All 31 registers are accessible at all times. Increasing the number of architectural registers decreases register pressure and can directly impact performance. "

"The move to ARMv8 also doubles the number of FP/NEON registers (from 16 to 32) as well as widens all of them registers to 128-bits (up from 64-bits). Support for 128-bit registers can go a long way in improving SIMD performance. Whereas simply doubling register count can provide moderate increases in performance, doubling the size of each register can be far more significant given the right workload. There are also new advanced SIMD instructions that are a part of ARMv8. Double precision SIMD FP math is now supported among other things."

"The immediate upsides to moving to 64-bit today are increased performance across the board as well as some huge potential performance gains in certain FP and cryptographic workloads."

I would also invite you to search on "Mike Ash 64 bit". You'll find a nice article there that will help you learn about the changes 64 bit has allowed Apple to make with their runtime engine. As an example, object construction and destruction take half the time when running in 64bit mode, etc.

The bottom line here is that you're clearly not aware of the advantages of moving to 64 bit on ARM processors. Part of moving to 64 bit also includes moving to ARMv8. Based on your comments, it's clear that you're not aware of this improves performance.

Agreed. Then again, I never claimed reusing the case for the 5s was innovation. I did claim that Apple's work with the A7, M7 and Touch ID are innovation though. Nobody every claimed the plastic case for the 5c was innovation either. That's clearly a device that's much easier to manufacture (i.e. provides higher profit margins) than just shipping the iPhone 5 at a lower price as Apple's previous strategy would have dictated.

Negative, PowerVR doesn't make chips they just design them. There is no priority on design and Samsung has their GPU in their S4 with exynos. Apple owns a stake and uses their designs but does not own them. Samsung can make their chips in house and will most likely use PowerVR in S5 if they are going exynos since Mali isn't as good for phones and Adreno is qualcom only.

Intel will have 14nm in Q2 2014. They make their own wafers though so they can. TSMC is slow and all their 20nm they are producing hase been bought out by companies like Nvidia for their next gen GPUs.

Samsung pumps up their innovative department only when they're pushed... If not by LG, HTC, Apple, or as in this case Qualcomm or MediaTek... "But what i really believe", is that Samsung has "Alien" technology that they dip into, every time they need it. :)

You just nailed it there. Samsung has abundant tech in their RD. Thank God competition is pushing them to release it to us consumers. 2014 samsung phones will be monsters in the phone world. enjoying a note 3 now only God knows what a note 4 will be like. Samsung is simple the tech king.

Samsung is really pushing their limits to where they want even be able to produce a decent phone! 90% of the software on a GS4 is not even used. Touchwiz is toyish, the phone is made out of cheap plastic, yet they flood the market with all off these unheard of specs. 3gb of ram on a phone, and yes, all of you out there believe in your minds that your phone really needs this kind of horsepower to properly run, and as for octa, quad and all that non-sense that you think your apps really need to run--you are doing exactly what Samsung wants you to do---chase the numbers. Fortunately, Motorola got it right with the Moto X...as for you readers in here--you will call it mid range, no quad core, no 1080p, no sd because that is what Samsung has you believing to at least think you are ahead of the game..

Your an idiot, there is always a demand for more powerful devices, and there always will be. Android is slowly going to start entering the desktop and laptop market and do you think a snapdragon 800 even remotely compares to something like an intel i5 or fx 8350? Phones are not even as powerful as core 2 duos which sucks. This is just the beginning there is about to be CPU wars 2.0 between arm, intel and AMD on mobile devices and cheap computers. ARM is like the Power PC of the phone world and Intel/AMD will kill it again.

Being a fan of motos ideology in the X with specialized procs I would agree with you for the most part. Yet you are wrong in the Samsung side because that is also a viable alternative for adding value to a product. They give you all that power and what not at no extra cost (seeing how it costs as much as their competitors with less power). Ultimately it pushes the industry forward (albeit at the cost of a narrower direction) but at least Thnx to this we aren't as worse off as the Apple fans having been trapped in a no competition ecosystem.

Nice post man. I own both Android and Apple devices but Apple is the one taking its specs in the right direction. Less cores, more efficiency, custom software made for the SoC in use. Im a big fan of the Moto X and Google itself which shares this philosophy.

If this turns out true, it should mark the single greatest yearly processor improvement in history.
A fully flexible quad A53+quad A57 64bit combo done on 14nm.. damn that thing will, with all cores combined, pack more power than current Intel's Core i5 low voltage quad processor!

A tablet/laptop with such insanely powerful SoC running Linux should give us a first true idea how x86 and ARM architectures in their next generation will compare. (compared with the Core i5 machines on Linux)

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